Villalobos sentenced for 2014 Madrid murder
A murder case that seemed to never want to end finally reached its conclusion this spring, when a judge sentenced Brandon Villalobos, 22, to 15 years for the 2014 beating death of 12-year-old Alex Madrid.
Villalobos was 15 at the time of the murder and said Alex was his best friend.
In February 2020, a jury found Villalobos guilty of second-degree murder and guilty of tampering with evidence.
Julia M. Dendinger | News-Bulletin photo
Roxanne Madrid, mother of Alex Madrid, asked a district court judge to sentence the man who murdered her son to the maximum number of years allowed during a hearing Wednesday morning.
In May, 13th Judicial District Court Judge James Lawrence Sanchez sentenced Villalobos to 15 years in prison for the second-degree conviction, and three years for the tampering with evidence conviction, with the sentences to run consecutively, for a total of 18 years. The total time Villalobos will serve was reduced by the 2,628 days — 7.2 years — he already served before being sentenced.
On the night of Feb. 16, 2014, Madrid and Villalobos, left the Villalobos home on De Colores in Meadow Lake to go for a walk. According to statements by Villalobos, the two were heading to an abandoned mobile home near the Meadow Lake Community Center to vandalize it.
Villalobos initially told detectives while at the mobile home, three men jumped them, one of whom had a gun. Villalobos said he struck one of the men twice with a crowbar he was carrying and the two boys ran. Villalobos said he looked back but didn’t see his friend.
When he returned home that night, Villalobos told his mother, Loretta, what had allegedly occurred. That story was repeated to Madrid’s aunt the next morning when she came looking for him, and to deputies from the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office when they responded to her call for a missing child.
Villalobos went with deputies to the abandoned mobile home, but they found no signs of a scuffle as described by him. When they confronted him, Villalobos led them to Madrid’s body, which was hidden beneath a discarded box spring in an empty field less than half a mile south of his home.
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Julia M. Dendinger began working at the VCNB in 2006. She covers Valencia County government, Belen Consolidated Schools and the village of Bosque Farms. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists Rio Grande chapter’s board of directors.
Makayla Grijalva was born and raised in Las Cruces. She is a 2020 graduate of The University of New Mexico, where she studied multimedia journalism, political science and history.
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April 18, 2024
